Former Plan Colombia chief calls drug link accusations ‘absurd’

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The Colombian government’s former “Plan Colombia” director calls allegations she had ties to extradited paramilitary warlord “Jorge 40” absurd after she appeared at the investigation hearing on her alleged ties to the drug trafficker Wednesday.

According to Rafael Garcia, the former ICT director of the now-defunct intelligence agency DAS, former anti-narcotics official and Minister Sandra Suarez plotted with Jorge 40 and three former governors to expand the paramilitary’s political power in the north of the country in 2006 when Suarez was minister of environment, housing and territorial development.

“According to Garcia there was a possible alliance with the governors of Cesar, Magdalena and Guania to elect persons close to the paramilitaries’ Bloque Norte in [regional planning departments] CAR. This is absurd, because the accusations he makes have no base,” Suarez said after leaving the Prosecutor General’s headquarters in Bogota where the former official testified.

According to the former Plan Colombia chief, “in the Inspector General’s Office there was a writ of prohibition, where they told me there was no evidence. Now I come to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the same happens.”

The three former governors are all in jail for their ties to “Jorge 40.”

Suarez has always denied having known the former paramilitary leader or any member of a paramilitary group and has accused the former DAS official of slander.

Jorge 40 was extradited to the United States in 2008 and suspended all collaboration with Colombian justice in 2010.